


i think it's best if we both stay

by notalone91



Series: LoserFest 2021 [6]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Adult Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Apologies, But he's working on it!, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak is Bad at Feelings, Fluff, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Lover's Quarrel, M/M, Mature Conversations, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, eddie kaspbrak and the terrible horrible no good very bad day, honestly i think this is really cute, not smutty mature but like 'look at us handling things like adults' mature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29255895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalone91/pseuds/notalone91
Summary: Eddie hates Tuesdays.  This Tuesday is particularly bad.  Unfortunately, Richie will always put himself directly in the line of fire.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: LoserFest 2021 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138544
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	i think it's best if we both stay

**Author's Note:**

> Day 6 - Inspired By A Track From Red (Stay, Stay, Stay)

Tuesdays were boring. The main point of them was to get the hell through them. Eddie came in from a day of meetings that could have been emails and phone calls that could have been avoided in general. He even found himself resenting the idiots in his office. It was all too much and he just wanted to go home and crash.

But Richie, in true Richie form, was thrilled with everything. He’d written a solid 20 minutes of material. He’d made dinner, did laundry, and finished reading the last chapter of Bill’s book. He was productive and living for it. He was on a roll and wanted to celebrate with his boyfriend- the love of his life. 

“Did you hear me?” Richie asked, flopping down onto the couch next to him. “I am killing the game today!” 

A series of sad blips came from Eddie’s phone and the screen went to black. Game over. “Yep. Killing all sorts of games,” he muttered, 

Richie looked up at Eddie and pouted. Usually, he could tell that the annoying shit he was doing wasn't actually bothering him. That night… not so much. 

Inching away, Eddie tried to salvage some personal space for himself. He hissed a string of curses at his game as the little man was hit by a subway car again. It just figured. He'd gotten stuck in traffic, dealt with a less than stellar annual review after Derry, a call from his lawyer telling him Myra wanted more money because of course she did. She got everything they'd discussed in the pre-nup plus the house, and on top of that… it was Tuesday. He just wanted one thing to go right.

"Anything I can do?" Richie asked, eyebrows knitted together, hoping to at least lend the idea that he was there. Or could be if he would let him in.

Instinctively, he clammed up. He was still so used to being alone. His mother, then Myra had seen to that. "No," he answered, without thinking. What he didn't accept was for Richie to, generally, accept it at face value. He wouldn't press the issue. He'd tell him eventually. So, when Richie shrugged and laid his head back in Eddie’s lap, he nearly jumped out of his skin. All that did was guide his little avatar to jump into a particularly tall saw horse. "Fuck. Actually, yes," he decided. "There's something. Just leave me alone." Richie sat up and watched him with as much trepidation as one might watch a wild animal as he started his next run. "God damn it."

Without warning,, the phone whizzed past him and smacked the arm of the chair. "Eds, hey. It's just a game, Richie said soothingly as he reached over the edge to retrieve it.. "Usually, if you step-"

"I don't want advice," Eddie snapped.

Richie's eyes nearly bugged out from behind his glasses. "I was just trying to help," he yelped, getting up from the couch, eyes never leaving Eddie for a moment.

"Just don't!" He sprung from his seat and stormed off.

Without missing a beat, Richie backed off, throwing his hands up. "Okay. Jeez." The only response he received was the slam of their bedroom door followed by the steps he knew were headed for the shower. "Dinner'll be ready in 15," he called. His voice trailed off sadly. "Get it when you're hungry." Suddenly, he himself was no longer particularly inclined. 

No sooner had he started the water and kicked his way out of his socks, Eddie felt the familiar weight of his temper pressing on his shoulders. He couldn't identify it in the moment, but usually, it was easy enough to spot from the other side. So, as he climbed into the shower, he turned his anger inward. Nothing about Richie's behavior was new. It was how he had always been- how they had always been. 

Turning the water up as hot as it would go, he scrubbed a little harder than was actually necessary. He wanted to remove any of the ick that was left on him from the shitty day he’d had before anything else. The rest of his shower routine was timed perfectly down to 7-and-a-half minutes. A good match for Ritchie’s obscene 16 minute showers. It wasn’t like he shaved or brushed his teeth or even masturbated in the shower. He just… took that long. He’d start thinking or examining a freckle on his arm that he didn’t know was there, but Eddie had known was there since they were 11. 

Once he was finished, he moisturized, brushed his hair, brushed his teeth and threw on clean clothes. All the while, his mind whirred. He knew all of these little things, minute details, about Richie. Obviously, the stuff that people considered big in a relationship, street you grew up on, mother’s maiden name, first best friend, first crush, first kiss, first heartbreak. Hell, he knew them all at the same time Richie did, just about. And likewise, Richie knew the same. But it was the small details- the idiosyncratic details that made him tick- coffee with an insane amount of sugar and a dab of whatever non-dairy milk substitute they had in with vanilla if they had it, bourbon neat, wintergreen mints, prefers the smallest silverware they have because it makes him feel like a giant king, eats left handed even though he’s a righty, hates the consistency of oatmeal unless it’s baked in a casserole, prefers DC with the exception of the XMen, never cries during movies except ones about memory loss, sleeps on his right side if they’re in bed together because he wants to wake up looking at Eddie, even though he is was and always has been more comfortable on his left. He could go on and on about the little things he knows about Richie. It’s strange. He doesn’t think he ever knew these type of things about Myra and they were together 10 years.

You don’t know someone like that and not bug them.

Historically, they’d always bugged each other. The way he thought of it, their relationship was like that pair of jeans that made his ass look phenomenal. Worn in perfectly, now, still as supportive and perfectly tight without being constricting but every once in a while, if he walked too fast or too much, they’d rub, just a little, or if he wore the wrong underwear, they might pinch. That didn’t mean that he didn’t love the jeans or that they weren’t still his absolute all time favorite. Just, sometimes they bugged him. And it was, usually, something he did. Not the jeans. Jeans are jeans. Richie is Richie.

He looks at the bed, debating just going to sleep and hoping it’ll all be gone in the morning. That was something the Eddie Kaspbrak who married a woman who was the doppelganger of his mother would do. Not the Eddie Kaspbrak who killed an intergalactic being and moved in with his high school sweetheart at forty. That was the Eddie he liked. They were fundamentally the same, but God, they could not have been more different. 

Sheepishly, he padded down the stairs, calling out to him. “Hey, Richie?” In the quiet, he heard a sharp exhale followed by a noncommittal hum. He must have really hurt him more than he thought. “We need to talk.”

There was some shuffling. Eventually, Richie gave a quiet, shaky, “Okay.” 

Even before he reached the kitchen, he started talking. He just couldn’t wait. “I'm sorry. I was in a bad mood and I took it out on you. It's been tough recently and I'm trying.” He took a breath and folded his arms leaning against the doorway when he reached it. Still, he stared at his feet. “Angry, walled off Eddie is supposed to be gone, that's not who I am with you. That's who I was with Myra and I'm trying to be better. And I-'' Finally, he looked up at Richie and froze. “What the hell?” He busted up laughing and crossed to him. He knocked the colander he had donned like a jousting helmet side to side. 

Stunned, Richie stammered, taken aback by the sudden bout of earnest emotion. “I figured I should guard myself if you were gonna still be mad.” He looked down, a little ashamed of himself. “And if you were gonna break up with me, I wanted to make you laugh one more time.”

“Break up with you?” Eddie’s heart broke for him. He squatted down between his knees, hands on his thighs. “Richie, what are you talking about? We had a fight.” Richie nodded. From this close, it was clear that he must have been crying the entire time Eddie was in the shower. He felt like the world’s biggest idiot. He should never have gone upstairs. He reached up and brushed away a few errant tears. “Hardly even a fight at that,” he assured, remembering that, once, Richie had mentioned that he’d never actually been in a fight with a significant other. Not as an adult, anyway. “I wanted to apologize now because I didn't want us to go to bed mad. I love you,” he said, looking directly into Richie’s eyes. “I'm not going anywhere.” 

He rose up and kissed him gently at the same time Richie made a quiet “Oh,” of understanding, like it hadn’t really hit him that that’s all it was. Richie’s hand instinctively went to Eddie’s neck and he nearly melted. For a pair of teenagers that had used play fighting as a twisted mating ritual, real arguments took a lot out of the adults they became.

“Did you really think I was going to break up with you?” Eddie asked later, when they were curled together watching The Punisher, the original and, in Richie’s mind, far superior because it was just so much worse, after the day’s events had been worked through.

Richie rested his head on the back of the couch. “The thought crossed my mind,” he admitted. Truthfully, it had been his only thought from the time Eddie walked in the door. He took one look at him and his eyes were full of such distaste. He was so sure it was over.

That was not something he ever wanted him to think. Ever. Not even on the table. “Richie, why?”

“I…” He started, his joke dying on his lips before he could fully form it. He settled on honesty. “We've been together almost a year and I haven't been with anyone all that long. I mean, Sandy was off and on for almost 3, but that was a long time ago and it was mainly off and…” He looked at Eddie who looked at him with such a soft concern that he had to look away again. “I just thought-”

Directing himself into his sight again, he took a breath before starting. He was still so much the scared little boy who had broken the latch on his bedroom window so he could always make his way in if he had a nightmare. “I have loved you forever,” he said with absolutely no room for misinterpretation. Richie was his Off-The-Deep-End, World-Revolving, Prince-Charming, Once-In-A-Lifetime type of love. “Since we were way too young to know what it meant and in all the years between. You give me no choice but to love you.”

Laughing, fully for the first time all night, Richie agreed. “Yeah, I'm insistent that way,” he said. It was true. He’d never thought of it that way, he supposed, but he had made damn sure that Eddie Kaspbrak felt the same way he did. “I love you,” he said, kissing Eddie gently before pulling back and screaming at the top of his lungs, “I love my boyfriend.”

“I'm too old to be a boyfriend,” Eddie laughed, thinking to himself, not for the first time, that he was so grateful that their nearest neighbor was every bit of a half mile away. 

“Ugh. I hate partner,” Richie said with acrid distaste. “Please don't make me call you partner. Ew. Or lover,” he added, the word dripping off his tongue. Then, it hit him. “Wait, if I have to call you partner, I'm doing it in the worst cartoony John Wayne accent.” Never having really done one, Richie tried it out, but it definitely came across more like Nathan Lane doing Robin Williams doing John Wayne. “Pilgrim! You're my pilgrim!”

“How about husband?” Eddie said, kissing him through his fit of giggles.

The thing is, he knew what he said. He’d felt it for months. They were already an old married couple. Just because this a “big fight” didn’t mean they didn’t bicker over clothes and dinner and tv. It’s just life when you spend your every waking moment together, he thought

Richie, however, was floored. “Is that- are you proposing?” His poor heart just about jumped out of his chest. 

No. He guessed he wasn't. Sure, there was a ring upstairs in his bedside table, but not tonight. “Just something to think about,” he saod flippantly as he got up off the couch and retreated to the kitchen for a snack.

“Wait!” Richie called, diving into his laptop case and coming back with a tiny, red box that still bore a sticker from Secondhand Rose Antiques on the bottom. “Eds, wait,” he called, chasing after him.


End file.
